Developer of commercial and industrial real estate Young Woo & Associates has sold the retail space at 72 Wall Street in the Financial District to Best Work Holdings, a suspected affiliate of the company, for $14.5 million, the International Business Times reported. Best Work is registered at 72 Wall Street and the deed was signed by Charlotte Cheung, a Young Woo official, IBTimes said. Young Woo purchased 72 Wall Street, also known as 73 Pine Street, and 70 Pine Street from American International Realty for $150 million in 2009. The space totals 6,100 square feet. Winick Retail, which marketed retail space earlier this year, said it was not involved in the deal. [IBTimes]

70 Pine St, Young Woo of Youngwoo & Associates

As 70 Pine Street heads to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for recognition of its historic past, the future of the 66-story Art Deco skyscraper is up in the air. According to the Post, a plan to convert the former American International Group building’s upper portion into high-end condominiums while keeping the lower portion of the building as offices has been scrapped by the new owners of the tower, who purchased it, along with the adjacent 72 Wall Street, for $150 million from American International Group in 2009. Those owners are a group led by Korea’s Kumho Investment Bank — not, as previously reported, New York developer Young Woo, of Youngwoo & Associates, who was previously believed to have bought the properties with some equity from KIB. In fact, KIB now says its group owns 100 percent of 70 Pine Street and that Woo is “just part of the [group of] advisers” created to manage the building. Comments

70 Pine St, Young Woo of Youngwoo & Associates

The 66-story Art Deco tower at 70 Pine Street, the former American International Group tower where developer Youngwoo & Associates is planning a partial condominium conversion, is going up for landmarking. According to the Post, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing next month on the skyscraper, which was built by Clinton & Russel, Holton & George in 1932 and is currently the tallest building in Lower Manhattan. Peers of 70 Pine, like the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and Donald Trump’s 40 Wall Street, all enjoy protection as landmarks, meaning any changes to their structures must be first approved by the LPC. [more]

SouFun Holdings, a Chinese property website based in Beijing, plans to spend $46 million to acquire a former training center of American International Group in Manhattan, with the purchase expected to be completed in the first half of 2011. The training center includes a 250,000-square-foot building at 72 Wall Street, one of a pair of adjoining AIG properties purchased last year by Youngwoo & Associates and Korea-based Kumho Bank. In 2009, Youngwoo and Kumho paid $150 milliion for 72 Wall and neighboring 70 Pine Street. SouFun, which has 65 offices in China, said it will partner with selected universities and colleges in the U.S. to train its expanding management, staff and clients in the former AIG center. [China Knowledge]

Embattled real estate developer Kent Swig is set to ink a deal to sell
140 William Street for $11.5 million within the next few weeks, the
Wall Street Journal reported. It was unclear who was buying the
seven-story, 48,000-square-foot building, but experts suggested it
would likely be turned into condos. Though Swig had been hoping to get
$14.2 million for the vacant downtown property, the $239 per square
foot price is better than what other buildings downtown have fetched
recently. Only two buildings in the area changed hands last year, both
owned by American International Group; AIG sold 72 Wall Street for $37
million, or $114 a square foot, and 70 Pine Street for $113 million, or
$103 a square foot. The $11.5 million sale is likely to make only a
dent in Swig’s debt since there are at least $50 million in judgments against him for a variety of failed projects,
and Swig has hinted in the past that he may file for personal
bankruptcy. Most recently, Swig was reportedly in danger of losing 80 Broad Street after one of his lenders foreclosed
on the property last week, because Swig had defaulted on the $12
million loan. [Crain's]

[more]

Deutsche Bank is in the process of acquiring one of the former AIG
headquarters buildings from Youngwoo & Associates and its Korean
banking partners, Kumho Investment Bank, according to the New York Post.
The deal involves breaking down the walls that separate four to five
floors between 72 Wall Street and 60 Wall Street, the bank’s adjacent
leased building. The plan also calls for leveling out and extending the
bank’s trading floors into the two buildings. CB Richard
Ellis’ Bill Shanahan and Darcy Stacom sold the AIG two-building
headquarters at 72 Wall Street and 70 Pine Street
to Youngwoo and Kumho for $150 million last August.
The lower floors of 70 Pine Street are being marketed by Cushman &
Wakefield for rent at $35 per square foot as office space, with the top of the
1.1-million-square-foot Art Deco tower slated for hotel and residential use. [Post]

[more]

Lower Manhattan, the country’s best-performing office market, is struggling to hang on to its title as vacancies mount. Though the Financial District fared relatively well during the commercial property slide, demand is no longer keeping up with increasing inventory. Goldman Sachs, American International Group and Bank of America are among the major tenants relocating, which follows the flight of firms like Lehman Brothers after Sept. 11, 2001. Goldman Sachs is moving to its new West Street building and vacating 2 million square feet offices including 85 Broad Street and 1 New York Plaza. AIG last year sold its 70 Pine Street and 72 Wall Street headquarters. Bank of America, meanwhile, is moving its employees into a new Midtown tower at One Bryant Park, and it remains to be seen what will happen to the World Financial Center offices of Merrill Lynch, which it acquired last year. Cushman & Wakefield expects Lower Manhattan’s vacancy rate to hit 14 percent by late next year — the highest since 1997 — and the 4.4 million square feet of office space planned for the two new towers going up at the World Trade Center isn’t helping that metric. “The amount of space that’s potentially going to come to the market will increase availabilities and put pressure on pricing,” said Kenneth McCarthy, who heads New York-area research for Cushman & Wakefield. [Bloomberg]

Lower Manhattan’s office market saw declining rents and record-low leasing activity during 2009, but ended the year with activity on the rise and vacancies on a recently-rare downward trend, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Real Estate Market Year in Review for 2009 (click here for the full report). Rising from 7.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 9.9 percent in the third quarter of 2009, office vacancies dropped off to 9.6 percent by the close of the year.

Commercial office tenants in the Downtown market tended to sign on for smaller spaces and shorter terms, according to the report. “Downtown may need to adjust further to compete with low-priced sublease space and precipitously falling rents in the Midtown market,” the report noted.
In the residential market, sales volume dropped 52 percent over 2008, largely on a decline in inventory. Meanwhile, rentals held up relatively well: vacancies in Downtown rental units hovered at around 2 percent, which the report attributed to consistent demand for such inventory. TRD [more]

The Manhattan multifamily and commercial sales markets showed signs of improvement in the third quarter of 2009, while the office leasing market continued to be plagued by an increasing inventory of inexpensive sublease space and a shrinking workforce, according to a report released by Eastern Consolidated today.
Sales of multifamily residential buildings in Manhattan increased, to 101 transactions totaling $392 million in the third quarter, from 66 valued at $254 million in the quarter earlier, the report said. The average transaction was valued at $271 per square foot, up from $260 per square foot in the second quarter. For commercial buildings, property sales volume was up to $1.08 billion from $510 million in the quarter earlier, though that number was largely driven by the sale of 825 Eighth Avenue for $605 million and 70 Pine Street/72 Wall Street for $150 million, two large transactions. TRD [more]

70 Pine Street, Young Woo, head of Youngwoo & Associates

The developer of 70 Pine Street in the Financial District predicts it will be able to sell residential condominium units in the tower of the American International Group building for $2,000 per square foot following a rehabilitation of the 63-story structure. Developer Youngwoo & Associates bought the Art Deco office tower and neighboring 72 Wall Street for $150 million, or about $105 per square foot in August, with financial partner South Korea’s Kumho Investment Bank. Young Woo, principal of Youngwoo & Associates, said the key to getting $2,000 per square foot was to market the building as a premium product, comparing it to a Louis Vuitton bag or an iPod. “If we can create that perfect trend lifestyle for this building, for our targeted audience, we are not afraid to achieve $2,000 a square foot,” Woo said. He added that units in his West Village condo, the Sky Garage at 200 11th Avenue at 24th Street, a building that includes an elevator for cars, sold for more than $4,000 per square foot. [more]